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→Legal Case Against Petronas
==Legal Case Against Petronas==
==Legal Case Against Petronas==
GoDaddy faced a legal battle against Petroliam Nasional Berhad (Petronas), a government-owned oil company in Malaysia and owner of the Petronas twin towers. Petronas accused GoDaddy of First Amendment Complaint alleging that the company violated the Anti-Cybersquatting and Protection Act ([[ACPA]]) for [[Cybersquatting|cybersquatting]], contributory to cybersquatting and unfair competition under the California Business & Professions Code § 17200 and California common law on Septemeber 9, 2010.<ref>[http://www.thedomains.com/2012/01/07/federal-court-holds-in-favor-of-godaddy-in-suit-for-cybersquatting-contributory-cybersquatting/]</ref>
===Case Background===
The case involved two disputed domain names petronastowers.net and petronastower.net, which were registered with GoDaddy by a third party named Heiko Schoenekess who used the registrar's online“dashboard” to automatically redirect the Internet traffic for the disputed domain names to pornographic sites. Petronas learned that its trademark was violated by the registrant On November 26, 2009. The company asked GoDaddy to "cease its contributory infringement of the petronastower domain names.In response, GoDaddy argued that domain name ownership disputes should be sent to the registrant or to an arbitration forum such as the [[WIPO]]. The company also said it will not tolerate illegal content of customer's websites and it will cooperate with law enforcement agency for the websites to be taken down. Instead of resolving the case through arbitration procedure, Petronas filed a trademark claim to GoDaddy on December 16, 2009 using the company's "Trademark and/or Copyright Infringement Policy," which excludes domain name disputes. GoDaddy replied that it can only take action against websites related to trademark infringement if the hosting was provided by the company, however the hosting of the disputed domain names were hosted by a different company. GoDaddy reiterated its position that the proper venue to resolve the problem was through a [[UDRP]]. Futhermore, under ICANN's policy and the UDRP, registrars are prohibited to get involved with domain ownership disputes.<ref>[http://www.scribd.com/doc/77067353/Berhad-v-GoDaddy Berhad vs. GoDaddy]</ref> Petronas insited GoDaddy to takedown the domain name and the website but GoDaddy remain maintained a status quo. The registrant of the disputed domain names were also unreachable when Petronas tried to contact them. On December 19, 2008, Petronas filed an in rem action against petronastower.net. On May 13, 2010, the court ordered the transfer of the domain name to Petronas. The same situation happened to the second domain name petronastowers.net, which was also transfered to the company on August 27, 2010. <ref>[http://www.scribd.com/doc/77067353/Berhad-v-GoDaddy Berhad vs. GoDaddy]</ref>
GoDaddy filed a motion to dismiss the case due to failure on the side of Petronas to state its claim. On May 5, 2011, the court denied the motion citing that some issues needed to be clarified including the terms forwarding and routing and if they were part of domain names registration services. Following, the court's ruling, GoDaddy filed a motion for summary judgement on the three allegations against the company. Go Daddy argued that it is not the registrant of the disputed domain names and based on ACPA, cybersquatting is the bad faith registration of domain name that is identical or confusingly similar to a distinctive mark. In addition, the company asserted that its only role was it provided the registrant with an automatic infrastructure service to route the disputed domain names to his chosen websites. Petronas has no evidence to prove that GoDaddy acted in bad faith with the intention to gain profit from the Petronas trademark. GoDaddy effectively defended its position. On Janury 12, 2012, the court granted its motion for summary judgment. <ref>[http://www.scribd.com/doc/77067353/Berhad-v-GoDaddy Berhad vs. GoDaddy]</ref>
==References==
==References==